The Next Power Couple Of Indie Film?

“[Noah] Baumbach has a wary gaze and speaks in careful loops of retraction and calibration; it’s hard to imagine that he spent years doing improvised comedy, during and after college. … [Greta] Gerwig, who is twenty-nine, also has a precise, literate mind, but she is more buoyant, and sometimes has the air, not uncommon among her contemporaries, of having swallowed a very low dose of LSD.”

How Much Has Russia’s Literary Culture Changed?

Here’s a scene from a recent literary award ceremony: “The videos featured many extreme close-ups, with no effort to conceal writerly pallor, blemishes or facial tics. … The real writers standing onstage looked very small in comparison. Some shifted from side to side, eyes downcast; others trembled. After each prize was announced, models emerged to give trophies to the winners and iPads to the less fortunate. No one looked very happy about the iPad.”